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And it's over and I'm missing them already. This last part was the easiest to write and the hardest to stop writing.
Thanks to all who read and encouraged me on my 15,000 word drabble :-)
Previous parts are here.
Buried Dreams
Part Eight
"This is all your fault!"
It was the fifth, possibly the sixth time Professor Blake had said -- screamed -- that at him and MacGyver was getting bored. He pointedly adjusted the bandage around his arm and stared out of the window at the chaos.
More interesting.
"My dig! Ruined!"
"Everything you were planning to excavate is still there." Everything you knew about, anyway. "You're just going to have to, uh, dig a little deeper."
"I did dig! I've been digging for two years and I had the tomb uncovered, ready to be explored! And now it's lying under… it's buried under… it's gone."
"I'm sorry," MacGyver said gently turning to him and seeing the very real distress under the anger. "But how were we -- how was I to know that there was a deposit of natural gas there and that it would, uh, pick that moment to ignite and… bury stuff?"
As cover stories went, he just hoped he was out of the country real soon, and out of reach of people who'd know damn well he was lying through his teeth. Luckily, the professor had slept through most of it and emerged, rubbing his eyes and pish and toshing the workers who'd told him about explosions and balls of fire shooting up into the sky and vanishing from sight.
Memories of spaceships shaped like pyramids were fading as people rationalized their way out of looking ridiculous.
And MacGyver and Daniel weren't talking. To the mostly indifferent police, to the professor, to each other.
Easy to claim partial amnesia after what they'd gone through -- and in Daniel's case, it might even be true. He'd hit his head hard and somehow MacGyver didn't think all of the memories of what had happened the night before had been happy ones Daniel wanted to hang onto.
He'd killed someone. Sort of. That left scars. The sort you couldn't kiss better, and wasn't that the kissing -- something else that might be bothering him? MacGyver thought so. He'd limped over to Daniel's bed in the small, makeshift hospital -- they hadn't been the only ones injured -- and Daniel had jerked his head away from MacGyver's tentative touch and given him nothing but a muttered assurance that he was fine, now could MacGyver please get the hell out so that he could sleep?
Except he hadn't been that polite.
MacGyver went back to staring out of the window, where the setting sun was painting the rubble and the pit in blood and gold.
Tomorrow. He'd get up early, leave at dawn. Cairo would welcome him into its busy, squalid, spectacularly sprawling embrace and he'd eat an ice cream just because and be on a plane home by nightfall.
After he'd looked up that son of a bitch Redfern and confronted him with the thefts. His hand made a fist, knuckles white. Oh, he really wanted to hit someone. It'd hurt, it always did, but he didn't care.
***
His truck jounced and bounced over another rut in what they called a road out here and what MacGyver called a scratch in the pebble-ridden sand. He bit back a groan of pain as his bruises complained, and settled his injured arm more comfortably in his lap. Driving one-handed was making it difficult to avoid the potholes, which meant his arm was getting jarred, but driving with both hands on the wheel left it throbbing with pain after a few minutes, so he didn't have much choice.
He'd made it out of camp unnoticed by anyone but an old man, dreaming over a fire, who'd offered him a small cup of black rocket fuel and chuckled drowsily when MacGyver choked and spluttered. Thick and sharp, the coffee had jolted him alert after a terrible night's sleep, filled with blue eyes, bitten-lush lips, and endless dreams of falling, only his scream for company. Sometimes, it'd been Daniel who'd fallen, and MacGyver whose fingertips had grazed Daniel's outstretched, imploring hand and failed to connect. Those were the ones he'd woken from with an anguished cry locked in an aching throat.
Overhead a raptor wheeled, wide wings spread, catching the warm air rising, looking for prey. MacGyver watched him, dividing his attention between the hawk and the road, until the bird stooped and plummeted down, spilling air, talons extended.
Falling.
MacGyver slowed down until his heartbeat wasn't choking him anymore and then pushed his foot down, letting his truck gather speed. The hell with it. He'd outrace his demons, leave them in his dust…
With every jerk forward of the speedometer's needle, he felt better. The truck was flying now, skimming over bumps, the road smoothing out under its wheels.
Just like they'd flown…
"No. No."
He couldn't risk driving one-handed for this and his arm was throbbing mercilessly, but the pain kept him focused. He tightened his grip and felt the throb become a stab of pure agony.
Again. Tighter. Again.
Wanted it to hurt. Wanted something to hurt that he could admit to feeling. Couldn't admit to missing Daniel, now could he? Couldn't expect sympathy for the loss of… what? A friendship? Had they known each other long enough for that? Maybe… Some people, you just knew, right from the start. Like Pete. Like Jack. Could go years between encounters and it was as easy to pick up where you left off as stooping to pick up a bright, shiny stone on a beach.
Daniel had wanted more than his friendship, though. For a few hours, he had, at least. Making him believe that for once, just once, dammit, he'd found someone to see him as he was, the hidden loneliness, the need -- Daniel's eyes had held it, too, that signal, that plea; unless he'd seen his own hope mirrored back to him.
And Daniel had changed his mind. Retreated, backed off.
MacGyver heard the engine howl and felt the truck buck and quiver as he took a curve in a skidding sweep.
Ahead, a Jeep waited. Not the one he and Daniel had abandoned; he'd passed that thirty minutes ago, already stripped down by scavengers, sand-scoured scrap metal now, no more.
He slowed because it was stopped, engine steaming, and that meant someone might be in trouble. You didn't drive on by in the desert. Might be a trap but you still stopped.
When he saw Daniel leaning against the side of it, his eyes squinting against the rising sun, his mouth screwed into a quizzical smile, he almost broke that unwritten law.
"I was starting to think I'd missed you," Daniel said. He nodded at the road. "But there weren't any fresh tracks, and this is the only road."
Almost.
MacGyver got out of the truck and took three long strides toward Daniel before he stopped. "You were asleep when I left. How did you get here?"
He'd looked. One look from the doorway at a tousle of light brown hair and the sleepy curve of a shoulder. He'd left before the breath he'd pulled in at the sight had needed to be exhaled.
"I wasn't asleep. I was waiting for you to come over, tell me it was time to go. When I heard your truck start up I realised I'd been stood up." Daniel's lips twisted in a smile. "So I came after you."
"How?" It didn't make sense to his sleep-deprived, aching head. He suspected it wouldn't have done if he'd been feeling better. "One road, you were behind me, no one passed me. How?"
Daniel pushed his glasses up with a finger, blood and dust held in the crease between skin and nail. All Mac's fingers were like that, too. "I took a short cut."
"There is no… wait. Wait." MacGyver turned and looked at the tracks. "You cut across the desert? In that? In anything? Are you insane?"
He got a shrug. "It worked. Success redefines insanity to…hmm, I kind of like audacious, don't you? Reckless, if you insist."
"I'll stick with insane, if you don't mind," MacGyver told him. "God!" He walked in a circle, trying to get himself under control and failing. "Suppose you hadn't made it? Suppose you'd made it this far and missed me?" he burst out. "It could've been days before anyone came --"
"No, this is the only working vehicle at the dig," Daniel said thoughtfully. "I'm fairly sure they'd have come looking for me."
"In what?" MacGyver howled.
"Camels."
"What?"
"Ca-mels," Daniel enunciated slowly. "Ships of the desert. Things with humps." He smiled and quoted softly,
"'And there ought to be a corner for me
(And I know there is one for you)
When we get the hump--
Cameelious hump--
The hump that is black and blue!'"
He blinked curiously at MacGyver. "Why are you angry?"
"Yesterday?" MacGyver said tightly. "You…" He couldn't find the words. Instead, he reached out and sketched a pat in the direction of Daniel's head, before shrugging helplessly and letting his hand fall away.
"Oh." Enlightenment was chased by shame across Daniel's expressive face. "That. I didn't think you'd take it that way. I'm not very good at all this. I was just… angry."
"With me? Why?"
"You blew up my spaceship!"
Deep breath. He got light-headed, but it helped. "In the first place, we blew it up together. In the second, it wasn't yours!" MacGyver frowned. "Whose was it?"
"I don't know." Daniel nibbled his lip. "Not Ancient Egyptian."
MacGyver snorted "Not any era Egyptian! There's not a nation on Earth who could've built that."
They contemplated the truth of that for a few moments in silence and then Daniel said casually. "We've got no proof. My notebook -- gone. The ship -- gone. Nothing."
"We'd better keep quiet, you mean?" MacGyver nodded. "We spout off about this and we'll be lucky if the worst they do is laugh at us."
"One day," Daniel said, his gaze distant. "There must be more proof, more evidence…"
"Yeah, well, good luck with that," MacGyver said. He met Daniel's eyes. "I mean it. Good luck."
"And goodbye?" Daniel said softly. "You can just leave me here; I've got water, and like I said, someone will be along. Everyone will be; the dig's going to be shut down and the fall semester starts soon, anyway; I've got to get back to the States."
"Why would I want to leave you here?" MacGyver asked. "It's hot and getting hotter; that ice cream would melt way too fast."
Daniel smiling beat the sun coming up for brightness. Daniel kissing him, sand-gritted lips working his open for a smooth, wet tongue to slip between, beat everything.
***
"Will it be hard? Saying goodbye?"
MacGyver shook his head, feeling the cool evening breeze stroke across his skin through the flutter of the curtains at the open window. They were hot, skin sheened with sweat, marked with bruises and cuts that hadn't slowed them down. His injured arm might have done, but Daniel was imaginative, MacGyver was inventive; they'd managed.
Managed very nicely.
"We just won't say it. We'll be in an airport, Daniel; I start saying goodbye to you there and I'll lose it, big time. Tears, wailing, clinging onto your ankle as you walk awa--ow! Hey!"
"You deserved it." Daniel contemplated the new mark he'd left on MacGyver's thigh, shrugged, slid down the bed and kissed it.
"While you're down there…"
"Again? Already?"
"You're complaining?"
Daniel ran his tongue in a dreamily wavering line along the crease of MacGyver's hip and then took a sharp detour. "You have sand everywhere," he observed. "All the cracks…"
"You'd know…" MacGyver bit his lip to hold back a moan and then ruined it all by whimpering. "God, Daniel…"
"I'll see you again."
There was enough insecurity under the statement to make MacGyver's heart lurch, just a little. He twisted away from Daniel's mouth and reached down, pulling Daniel up into his arms. "You'll see me. You'll hear from me. You need me, I'll be there."
"Bet you say that to all your friends."
"I do, yeah, but I don't tell them I'll be dreaming of them. Missing them. I don't tell them I'll never forget them."
"So we don't say goodbye?"
MacGyver slid his hand through Daniel's hair, feeling the strands part and wrap around his fingers. "Not in any of those eighteen languages you speak. No goodbyes."
Daniel nodded, turned his head to kiss the palm of MacGyver's hand, and slid down the bed again.
Thanks to all who read and encouraged me on my 15,000 word drabble :-)
Previous parts are here.
Buried Dreams
Part Eight
"This is all your fault!"
It was the fifth, possibly the sixth time Professor Blake had said -- screamed -- that at him and MacGyver was getting bored. He pointedly adjusted the bandage around his arm and stared out of the window at the chaos.
More interesting.
"My dig! Ruined!"
"Everything you were planning to excavate is still there." Everything you knew about, anyway. "You're just going to have to, uh, dig a little deeper."
"I did dig! I've been digging for two years and I had the tomb uncovered, ready to be explored! And now it's lying under… it's buried under… it's gone."
"I'm sorry," MacGyver said gently turning to him and seeing the very real distress under the anger. "But how were we -- how was I to know that there was a deposit of natural gas there and that it would, uh, pick that moment to ignite and… bury stuff?"
As cover stories went, he just hoped he was out of the country real soon, and out of reach of people who'd know damn well he was lying through his teeth. Luckily, the professor had slept through most of it and emerged, rubbing his eyes and pish and toshing the workers who'd told him about explosions and balls of fire shooting up into the sky and vanishing from sight.
Memories of spaceships shaped like pyramids were fading as people rationalized their way out of looking ridiculous.
And MacGyver and Daniel weren't talking. To the mostly indifferent police, to the professor, to each other.
Easy to claim partial amnesia after what they'd gone through -- and in Daniel's case, it might even be true. He'd hit his head hard and somehow MacGyver didn't think all of the memories of what had happened the night before had been happy ones Daniel wanted to hang onto.
He'd killed someone. Sort of. That left scars. The sort you couldn't kiss better, and wasn't that the kissing -- something else that might be bothering him? MacGyver thought so. He'd limped over to Daniel's bed in the small, makeshift hospital -- they hadn't been the only ones injured -- and Daniel had jerked his head away from MacGyver's tentative touch and given him nothing but a muttered assurance that he was fine, now could MacGyver please get the hell out so that he could sleep?
Except he hadn't been that polite.
MacGyver went back to staring out of the window, where the setting sun was painting the rubble and the pit in blood and gold.
Tomorrow. He'd get up early, leave at dawn. Cairo would welcome him into its busy, squalid, spectacularly sprawling embrace and he'd eat an ice cream just because and be on a plane home by nightfall.
After he'd looked up that son of a bitch Redfern and confronted him with the thefts. His hand made a fist, knuckles white. Oh, he really wanted to hit someone. It'd hurt, it always did, but he didn't care.
***
His truck jounced and bounced over another rut in what they called a road out here and what MacGyver called a scratch in the pebble-ridden sand. He bit back a groan of pain as his bruises complained, and settled his injured arm more comfortably in his lap. Driving one-handed was making it difficult to avoid the potholes, which meant his arm was getting jarred, but driving with both hands on the wheel left it throbbing with pain after a few minutes, so he didn't have much choice.
He'd made it out of camp unnoticed by anyone but an old man, dreaming over a fire, who'd offered him a small cup of black rocket fuel and chuckled drowsily when MacGyver choked and spluttered. Thick and sharp, the coffee had jolted him alert after a terrible night's sleep, filled with blue eyes, bitten-lush lips, and endless dreams of falling, only his scream for company. Sometimes, it'd been Daniel who'd fallen, and MacGyver whose fingertips had grazed Daniel's outstretched, imploring hand and failed to connect. Those were the ones he'd woken from with an anguished cry locked in an aching throat.
Overhead a raptor wheeled, wide wings spread, catching the warm air rising, looking for prey. MacGyver watched him, dividing his attention between the hawk and the road, until the bird stooped and plummeted down, spilling air, talons extended.
Falling.
MacGyver slowed down until his heartbeat wasn't choking him anymore and then pushed his foot down, letting his truck gather speed. The hell with it. He'd outrace his demons, leave them in his dust…
With every jerk forward of the speedometer's needle, he felt better. The truck was flying now, skimming over bumps, the road smoothing out under its wheels.
Just like they'd flown…
"No. No."
He couldn't risk driving one-handed for this and his arm was throbbing mercilessly, but the pain kept him focused. He tightened his grip and felt the throb become a stab of pure agony.
Again. Tighter. Again.
Wanted it to hurt. Wanted something to hurt that he could admit to feeling. Couldn't admit to missing Daniel, now could he? Couldn't expect sympathy for the loss of… what? A friendship? Had they known each other long enough for that? Maybe… Some people, you just knew, right from the start. Like Pete. Like Jack. Could go years between encounters and it was as easy to pick up where you left off as stooping to pick up a bright, shiny stone on a beach.
Daniel had wanted more than his friendship, though. For a few hours, he had, at least. Making him believe that for once, just once, dammit, he'd found someone to see him as he was, the hidden loneliness, the need -- Daniel's eyes had held it, too, that signal, that plea; unless he'd seen his own hope mirrored back to him.
And Daniel had changed his mind. Retreated, backed off.
MacGyver heard the engine howl and felt the truck buck and quiver as he took a curve in a skidding sweep.
Ahead, a Jeep waited. Not the one he and Daniel had abandoned; he'd passed that thirty minutes ago, already stripped down by scavengers, sand-scoured scrap metal now, no more.
He slowed because it was stopped, engine steaming, and that meant someone might be in trouble. You didn't drive on by in the desert. Might be a trap but you still stopped.
When he saw Daniel leaning against the side of it, his eyes squinting against the rising sun, his mouth screwed into a quizzical smile, he almost broke that unwritten law.
"I was starting to think I'd missed you," Daniel said. He nodded at the road. "But there weren't any fresh tracks, and this is the only road."
Almost.
MacGyver got out of the truck and took three long strides toward Daniel before he stopped. "You were asleep when I left. How did you get here?"
He'd looked. One look from the doorway at a tousle of light brown hair and the sleepy curve of a shoulder. He'd left before the breath he'd pulled in at the sight had needed to be exhaled.
"I wasn't asleep. I was waiting for you to come over, tell me it was time to go. When I heard your truck start up I realised I'd been stood up." Daniel's lips twisted in a smile. "So I came after you."
"How?" It didn't make sense to his sleep-deprived, aching head. He suspected it wouldn't have done if he'd been feeling better. "One road, you were behind me, no one passed me. How?"
Daniel pushed his glasses up with a finger, blood and dust held in the crease between skin and nail. All Mac's fingers were like that, too. "I took a short cut."
"There is no… wait. Wait." MacGyver turned and looked at the tracks. "You cut across the desert? In that? In anything? Are you insane?"
He got a shrug. "It worked. Success redefines insanity to…hmm, I kind of like audacious, don't you? Reckless, if you insist."
"I'll stick with insane, if you don't mind," MacGyver told him. "God!" He walked in a circle, trying to get himself under control and failing. "Suppose you hadn't made it? Suppose you'd made it this far and missed me?" he burst out. "It could've been days before anyone came --"
"No, this is the only working vehicle at the dig," Daniel said thoughtfully. "I'm fairly sure they'd have come looking for me."
"In what?" MacGyver howled.
"Camels."
"What?"
"Ca-mels," Daniel enunciated slowly. "Ships of the desert. Things with humps." He smiled and quoted softly,
"'And there ought to be a corner for me
(And I know there is one for you)
When we get the hump--
Cameelious hump--
The hump that is black and blue!'"
He blinked curiously at MacGyver. "Why are you angry?"
"Yesterday?" MacGyver said tightly. "You…" He couldn't find the words. Instead, he reached out and sketched a pat in the direction of Daniel's head, before shrugging helplessly and letting his hand fall away.
"Oh." Enlightenment was chased by shame across Daniel's expressive face. "That. I didn't think you'd take it that way. I'm not very good at all this. I was just… angry."
"With me? Why?"
"You blew up my spaceship!"
Deep breath. He got light-headed, but it helped. "In the first place, we blew it up together. In the second, it wasn't yours!" MacGyver frowned. "Whose was it?"
"I don't know." Daniel nibbled his lip. "Not Ancient Egyptian."
MacGyver snorted "Not any era Egyptian! There's not a nation on Earth who could've built that."
They contemplated the truth of that for a few moments in silence and then Daniel said casually. "We've got no proof. My notebook -- gone. The ship -- gone. Nothing."
"We'd better keep quiet, you mean?" MacGyver nodded. "We spout off about this and we'll be lucky if the worst they do is laugh at us."
"One day," Daniel said, his gaze distant. "There must be more proof, more evidence…"
"Yeah, well, good luck with that," MacGyver said. He met Daniel's eyes. "I mean it. Good luck."
"And goodbye?" Daniel said softly. "You can just leave me here; I've got water, and like I said, someone will be along. Everyone will be; the dig's going to be shut down and the fall semester starts soon, anyway; I've got to get back to the States."
"Why would I want to leave you here?" MacGyver asked. "It's hot and getting hotter; that ice cream would melt way too fast."
Daniel smiling beat the sun coming up for brightness. Daniel kissing him, sand-gritted lips working his open for a smooth, wet tongue to slip between, beat everything.
***
"Will it be hard? Saying goodbye?"
MacGyver shook his head, feeling the cool evening breeze stroke across his skin through the flutter of the curtains at the open window. They were hot, skin sheened with sweat, marked with bruises and cuts that hadn't slowed them down. His injured arm might have done, but Daniel was imaginative, MacGyver was inventive; they'd managed.
Managed very nicely.
"We just won't say it. We'll be in an airport, Daniel; I start saying goodbye to you there and I'll lose it, big time. Tears, wailing, clinging onto your ankle as you walk awa--ow! Hey!"
"You deserved it." Daniel contemplated the new mark he'd left on MacGyver's thigh, shrugged, slid down the bed and kissed it.
"While you're down there…"
"Again? Already?"
"You're complaining?"
Daniel ran his tongue in a dreamily wavering line along the crease of MacGyver's hip and then took a sharp detour. "You have sand everywhere," he observed. "All the cracks…"
"You'd know…" MacGyver bit his lip to hold back a moan and then ruined it all by whimpering. "God, Daniel…"
"I'll see you again."
There was enough insecurity under the statement to make MacGyver's heart lurch, just a little. He twisted away from Daniel's mouth and reached down, pulling Daniel up into his arms. "You'll see me. You'll hear from me. You need me, I'll be there."
"Bet you say that to all your friends."
"I do, yeah, but I don't tell them I'll be dreaming of them. Missing them. I don't tell them I'll never forget them."
"So we don't say goodbye?"
MacGyver slid his hand through Daniel's hair, feeling the strands part and wrap around his fingers. "Not in any of those eighteen languages you speak. No goodbyes."
Daniel nodded, turned his head to kiss the palm of MacGyver's hand, and slid down the bed again.